Last semester, Bucknell’s Film Club gave me the amazing opportunity to attend the New York Film Festival and watch over 10 films at Lincoln Center, ranging from documentaries to avant-garde shorts. I also had the chance to attend the screening of “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary that showed at the Campus Theatre just a few weeks ago. The filmmakers, including the protagonist Basel Adra, were supposed to be there in person for the post-screening Q&A, but they were missing. We were instead informed that, due to escalating violence in the region, and Adra’s father being kidnapped and held hostage by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the team of directors decided to go back home. “No Other Land” documents the demolition of Masafer Yatta, a community of 20 small villages on the West Bank mountains, in occupied Palestinian territory—using footage taken over the course of two decades. And perhaps that’s one of the film’s most fascinating aspects: with no idea of what the footage would be used for, the people of the Palestinian villages, in the wake of settler destruction, picked up their cameras and affirmed their existence when no one else would.
“No Other Land” was made by an Israeli director (Rachel Szor), a Palestinian director (Hamdan Ballal), an Israeli activist (Yuval Abraham) and a Palestinian activist (Basel Adra), the latter two also starring as the main characters. Basel and Yuval’s friendship develops through the film as Yuval joins the villagers and strives for change through his writing, while Basel documents their efforts using his camcorder. The film alternates between his shaky handheld camerawork, which zooms through mountains and pans across bulldozers and tanks, and the professional equipment used by the directors, which captures the night ambiance and tension at Basel’s home. But it’s only Basel’s home we see, never Yuval’s in Be’er Sheva, Israel—a point driven home by a montage that takes us through the roads and signs to the border, where no Palestinian vehicle is allowed to cross. Yuval’s yellow-plated car is allowed, but the green-plated cars of Palestinians aren’t, as the film later explains. As one watches the film unfold, with switching camera technologies and evolving character dynamics, one gets the feeling that few other movies are as intertwined in their existence with the ability of the people to film.
The only weapon Yuval and Basel have is the truth, and that’s why they declare, “I’m filming you!” to the army as civilians are attacked and their homes are demolished. The camera is their only way to speak to the world with their otherwise stifled voices. In a collage of newsreels, from American, Israel and international news channels, the difference in coverage is shown, where fact becomes a matter of opinion. Indeed, there is a defeated silence paired with the smog of fatigue that looms over the picture. The slowness of the kids’ last moments of screen time before bed is interrupted by the running of Basel across hills and mountains, racing to document the last moments of his neighbor’s home for the international community. In other tense scenes, someone exclaims that their camera stopped working, and, at the same time, a group of villagers scream at the Israeli soldiers to leave their electricity generator alone. Yuval picks up the footage and captures the moment his friend Harun Abu Aram is shot and paralyzed as he tries to protect the generator—news that reaches both countries like a ripple in a sea of tragedies. Thus, the film is a documentation of the events and also how the events were documented. We see Basel look for his other camera in a hurry when he is called about another demolition and, later, we see him lying on the grass with his camera nearby, possibly defeated temporarily in spirit, as a bulldozer passes along the horizon behind him. Later still, when he is about to be arrested, Basel drops his camcorder and someone else films his arrest. When he frees himself and runs away, the camcorder is the first thing he thinks of and recovers. Meanwhile, throughout the movie, a meta-conversation on the role of film in politics is presented: Yuval and Basel are constantly discussing how many people they’ve reached, how to reach more and if anything even matters at all.
When “No Other Land” begins in the dark, Basel narrates that his first memories are of a light waking him up during his father’s arrest. Since he was a child, his father filmed the events of Masafer Yatta, realizing the importance of evidence. When an IDF soldier is asked if he is ashamed of his role in the demolitions he replies, “That’s the law, why should I feel ashamed?” True, the soldiers are just following orders, and with the physical power to follow them up, Basel is right to claim, “This is a film about power.” He says this in the context of the diplomatic protection offered by Tony Blair (then UK Prime Minister), for a secretly-built primary school which would have otherwise been destroyed. When many other documentaries need to reenact the most essential scenes of their subjects, “No Other Land” was present for it all: the film shows the secret construction of said school, where Basel studied as a child and which was built under the protection of night. In so many ways, this is also a film about building and deconstructing myths, as suggested in the montage of hills and skies filmed through doors of caves and buildings, shots which bring to mind the famous closing image of John Ford’s “The Searchers.” John Wayne’s character turns to the dunes of sand, unable to fit into the changing world, where his racist rhetoric on Native Americans is as challenged as the expansionist myth of Manifest Destiny.
How can the world truly listen while being constantly overstimulated by the never–ending content of hopeless news and mindless entertainment? Perhaps Bucknell’s midterms are to blame for no students attending this Campus Theatre screening, but as we choose what causes to support and what art to attend, we must remember that we, at least, have a choice. We all feel like Basel at some point, who turns to his phone for content when stressed, in his case by his and his family’s dire situation; yet when Basel gets up the next morning, it’s not to go to university, but to affirm his existence—by filming.